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food & water watch
Has Sen Schumer Learned Costly Lessons in the Federal Spending Fight?
With very few opportunities for the minority party to make a difference, Schumer and Senate Democrats now must hold strong to stand up for everyday Americans and their access to the most basic essentials.
Sep 26, 2025
In March, Food & Water Watch joined a chorus of organizations calling on New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to step aside as Democratic minority leader after his disastrous capitulation during the last federal appropriations fight. At the time, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk were running rampant, defunding and destroying critical climate, food, and water programs. But instead of fighting to mitigate the harms, Schumer led fellow Senate Democrats in ceding any leverage they had by capitulating to Republicans’ six-month spending bill without demanding any concessions or procedural backstops.
Now the opportunity has returned to leverage the significant power Senate Democrats have ahead of the latest spending deadline. For the moment it seems that Schumer has learned some lessons from the earlier debacle. He led his caucus to reject a House spending proposal and support an alternative plan to protect critical food, water, and health programs from Trump’s dangerous cuts. He must continue to demonstrate this leadership as the September 30 spending deadline draws near.
Trump and congressional Republicans are playing a dangerous game of chicken, running headfirst into a government shutdown on October 1 with no off-ramp. Trump has refused to even meet with Democratic leadership, and House Republicans are refusing to come back to work until after the funding deadline. They are following the same playbook they used in March to force the hands of Schumer and Senate Democrats. It worked then, and it will work again if Schumer doesn’t stand strong.
After all, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Access to safe, affordable food, clean water, basic healthcare, and so much more.
A Democratic counter proposal from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) includes a key protection against partisan rescissions. We are encouraged that Schumer claims to support this plan.
Though congressional Republicans tout their spending bill as a “clean” extension of current funding levels, this commitment is belied by their threatened use of partisan rescissions to enact Trump’s dangerous cuts later on. This backdoor process fast-tracks the elimination of previously agreed upon funding. While the spending bill needs the support of Senate Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold to avoid the filibuster, with partisan rescissions Trump can later send Congress a list of programs to eliminate through a simple majority vote—without requiring any Democratic support.
Case in point: Congressional Republicans slashed funding for public television and radio—long an aim of the right—through this partisan rescission process earlier in the year. Trump has further abused this tool to illegally withhold funding through a so-called “pocket rescission,” issuing a last-minute request to freeze funds, run out the clock on the fiscal year, and unilaterally cut congressionally-approved funds. This is unconstitutional.
Further backdoor cuts threaten everything from the environment to education to healthcare. On clean water specifically, Trump and congressional Republicans have proposed slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets limits on contaminants in water, develops methods to test for and removes toxic substances, and establishes regulations that prevent water pollution in the first place. Slashing the EPA will imperil the ability of regulators to enforce clean water standards, making our water less safe and Americans more sick.
Republicans have also proposed slashing funding for water infrastructure. In fact, Trump’s spending proposal calls for virtually eliminating funding for the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds—the primary source of federal funding for water infrastructure in the country. Our water infrastructure is already dramatically underfunded. Federal cuts will make it even more difficult for municipalities to respond to acute threats to water safety, including toxic PFAS “forever chemicals,” lead, and climate change-induced storms and flooding. The result will be higher water bills for households and business, and dirtier, dangerous water.
Senate Democrats must reject the House spending bill for these and many other reasons. Fortunately, a Democratic counter proposal from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) includes a key protection against partisan rescissions. We are encouraged that Schumer claims to support this plan.
Recently we facilitated a letter from more than 200 groups across the country that was sent to Sen. Schumer, demanding just this. The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Oxfam America, Popular Democracy, and Public Citizen, among many others. It seems that Sen. Schumer is finally listening.
With very few opportunities for the minority party to make a difference, Schumer and Senate Democrats now must hold strong to stand up for everyday Americans and their access to the most basic essentials, including clean water. No budget deal that allows for future partisan rescissions can be allowed to pass.
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Trump's MAHA Report Reads Like a Big Ag Wish List
Making Americans healthy will require confronting the very corporate polluters who got us in this mess—not capitulating to more of their demands.
Sep 13, 2025
US President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” ploy is more sinister than we have been led to believe. More than disingenuous lip service to a legitimately concerned—and powerful—voting bloc, Trump’s MAHA is a dangerous smokescreen designed to consolidate power with the corporations responsible for harming us all. The release of the White House MAHA Commission strategy report this week put this on full display.
The report, written by a commission chaired by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is designed to convey the Trump administration’s priorities on food and childhood chronic disease. In truth, its deregulatory proposals read like an agriculture industry wish list—Big Ag corporations and trade groups were among the few voices of support.
Making Americans healthy will require confronting the very corporate polluters who got us in this mess—not capitulating to more of their demands. Trump is doing just the opposite, letting some of the nation’s biggest corporations off the hook: pesticide manufacturers, livestock producers, and big chemical companies.
The MAHA Commission report is most notable for what it lacks, including any recommendations to regulate toxic pesticides. An abundance of research links these ubiquitous agricultural chemicals to everything from cancers and Parkinson’s disease, to birth defects and developmental disorders.
In May, Kennedy’s team identified concerns about children’s exposure to pesticides. The backlash from food and farm industry groups was swift. The administration consequently hosted a parade of industry groups including CropLife America, Walmart, and Coca-Cola. In fact, Kennedy testified in a recent Senate hearing that he had entertained 140 farm interest groups since May.
In keeping with White House promises to industry lobbyists, the MAHA strategy report lacks any mention of concern for pesticide exposure, parrots pesticide industry talking points, and pulls punches on pesticide regulation. It even promotes the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pesticide review process as robust and sufficient, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This review process has routinely been proven vulnerable to corporate influence.
This report is yet another step in Trump’s dangerous deregulatory agenda that will make America very, very sick.
This unwillingness to tackle toxic pesticides goes directly against the demands of voters and Kennedy’s own promises: Fully 71% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans support increasing restrictions on the use of pesticides in agriculture.
Meanwhile, Trump’s congressional allies are plotting with pesticide corporations to hamper EPA's ability to better regulate these toxic chemicals and shield pesticide manufacturers from health related lawsuits.
Food & Water Watch research catalogues the multimillion dollar push to pass Cancer Gag Acts in statehouses and Congress. Bayer has spent over $11 billion settling more than 100,000 cancer lawsuits related to its Roundup pesticide, whose key ingredient glyphosate the World Health Organization defines as a probable carcinogen. The federal Cancer Gag Act, expected to be reintroduced this fall as the “Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act,” is reportedly a House Farm Bill priority; House Republicans included related language in a July appropriations vote to prevent EPA from improving pesticide warning labels.
In another capitulation to industry, the MAHA strategy report also fails to address factory farms’ public health impacts. America has become a factory farming nation, with these industrial animal warehouses pockmarking rural communities from coast to coast. These facilities are often sited right next to homes and schools, releasing a cocktail of dangerous air pollution, including particulate matter, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide. These pollutants are linked to asthma and respiratory disease that gravely impact children’s health.
HHS agencies like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have the authority to study this pollution and recommend enforceable exposure limits for hazardous air emissions. This would help force factory farms to clean up their act and protect communities from dangerous health impacts. Any report serious about improving children's health must embrace these reforms.
Factory farms are also known drinking water polluters. Food & Water Watch analysis finds that factory farms produce a whopping 941 billion pounds of untreated waste annually. Much of it finds its way into the water we drink, carrying pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, E. coli bacteria, nitrates, and more into drinking water. These pollutants are linked to everything from cancers to antibiotic resistance. Faced with industry pressure, the MAHA report recommends weakening EPA’s already lax regulation of factory farm waste. Congressional Republicans have also introduced dangerous legislation to further deregulate the sector.
In yet another giveaway, the MAHA strategy report fails to adequately address the crisis that Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) contamination is wreaking on our health. These lab-made “forever chemicals,” found in drinking water nationwide, are linked to a large range of health problems including various cancers, altered hormone levels, decreased birth weights, digestive inflammation, and reduced vaccine response.
A full 97% of US residents have PFAS in their blood. Even still, the report makes only a passing mention of this rampant health concern, while simultaneously disregarding the Trump administration’s plan to gut recently-established common-sense PFAS drinking water safety rules. Food & Water Watch research tracks the tens of millions of dollars chemical corporations have spent on a campaign to conceal the health concerns of these forever chemicals—a concealment in which it appears the MAHA Commission is complicit.
The MAHA strategy report is, at best, a reckless industry giveaway. But a close reading belies the truth: This report is yet another step in Trump’s dangerous deregulatory agenda that will make America very, very sick. Trump’s budget cuts, which have gutted food safety oversight and closed food safety labs, stand in stark contrast to the few report takeaways where we agree. Take food chemicals and ultra processed foods for example.
Food & Water Watch has repeatedly called for overhaul of the federal Generally Recognized as Safe Loophole (GRAS) loophole—this report is right to endorse that reform. For years, food companies have self policed which chemicals make it into the food we eat, through this Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loophole. Today, hundreds if not thousands of chemicals are in our food because of this lack of oversight.
Food chemicals like titanium dioxide, potassium bromate, certain food dyes, and meat curing agents are part of a long list of chemicals that advocacy groups have been watching for years enter our food system. Critically, many of these chemicals are banned in other countries, yet still exist today on America’s grocery shelves.
It’s hard to believe Trump is serious about GRAS reform, when he’s busy gutting the very agency that would carry it out. His elimination of 3,500 FDA staff will leave the agency hamstrung, unable to implement even the few positive aspects of the MAHA strategy report.
Ultimately, the White House’s MAHA strategy will only deepen America’s industrial agriculture-driven health crisis. Any administration serious about public health must strictly regulate the corporations putting our food and water supplies at risk. Instead, Trump appears poised to do the very opposite.
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Progressives Blast MAHA Report That 'Echoes the Pesticide Industry's Talking Points'
One critic called the report "a slap in the face to the millions of Americans, from health-conscious moms to environmental advocates to farmers, who have been calling for meaningful action on pesticides."
Sep 09, 2025
Health and environmental advocates are hammering a new report issued Tuesday by the Trump administration's Make America Health Again Commission for papering over dangers posed by pesticides and replicating the positions of powerful corporate interests.
According to StatNews, the MAHA report takes a "cautious line" on pesticides, and even includes a section recommending that the Environmental Protection Agency work "with food and agricultural stakeholders... to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in [the Environmental Protection Agency's] pesticide robust review procedures."
As StatNews noted, this section in particular drew the ire of organic food advocate Elizabeth Kucinich—the spouse of Dennis Kucinich, who served as presidential campaign manager for Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who said that it "reads like it was written by Bayer and Monsanto."
Zen Honeycutt, founder of the pro-MAHA group Moms Across America, similarly told StatNews that "we are deeply disappointed that the committee allowed the chemical companies to influence the report," even as she praised other parts of it.
Public interest advocacy groups, meanwhile, slammed the MAHA report, which they called wholly deferential to major industries.
"The MAHA Commission report is a gift to Big Ag," said Food & Water Watch senior policy analyst Rebecca Wolf. "Its deregulatory proposals read like an industry wish list. The truth is, industrial agriculture is making us sick. Making America healthy again will require confronting Big Ag corporations head on—instead, the Trump administration has capitulated."
Wolf added that the MAHA report lacks "any real action on toxic pesticides linked to rising cancer rates nationwide" and called it "shameful but not surprising" that the report barely mentioned so-called "forever chemicals" contaminating drinking water "while disregarding how elsewhere in the administration common-sense water safety rules are being weakened and canceled."
Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, was even more scathing in her assessment of the report, which she called "a slap in the face to the millions of Americans, from health-conscious moms to environmental advocates to farmers, who have been calling for meaningful action on pesticides."
Like other critics, Starman heaped particular scorn upon the report's section on pesticides.
"Laughably, the report calls the EPA's lax, flawed, and notoriously industry-friendly pesticide regulation process 'robust,'" she said. "This, in spite of the fact that EPA currently allows more than 1 billion pounds of pesticide use on US crops each year, including the use of 85 pesticides that are banned in other countries because of the serious risks they pose to human health and the environment."
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) said that the MAHA report offered "a few crumbs" to health advocates, but was mostly filled with "hollow rhetoric."
George Kimbrell, legal director and co-executive director of CFS, also called out the report's claims about the EPA having a "robust" procedure for approving pesticides.
"There is nothing 'robust' about EPA's regulation of pesticides," he said. "In reality it is the antithesis of robust: it is an oversight system filled with data holes and regulation loopholes, lacking in public transparency, which has instead required decades of dogged public interest litigation to get EPA to do its most basic duties."
Environmental Working Group co-founder and president Ken Cook said that the report made a mockery of Kennedy's past promises to use his power to take on powerful industries.
"It looks like pesticide industry lobbyists steamrolled the MAHA Commission's agenda," he commented. "Secretary Kennedy and President Trump cynically convinced millions they'd protect children from harmful farm chemicals—promises now exposed as hollow."
Cook also took aim at the leaders of the MAHA movement, whom he described as "grifters exploiting the hopes and fears of health-conscious Americans in their quest for power jobs in Washington."
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